The illustrative embodiments described in the present application are useful in systems including those for providing funds accounting and evidencing and more particularly are useful in systems including those for providing for accounting of postage and evidence of postage and for providing refunds of unused postage.
Funds accounting, storing and dispensing systems typically encounter a certain number of failed funds dispense transactions. For example, the United States Postal Service (USPS) approves postage meters for use in evidencing payment of postage.
Mailing machines including postage meters such as the DM800™ mailing machine are commercially available from Pitney Bowes Inc. of Stamford, Conn. Additionally, the CLICKSTAMP™ Online (CSO) Internet postage system is available from Pitney Bowes Inc. and facilitates printing postage using a personal computer and printer.
Many postage meters in the United States provide funds accounting such that a local source of funds is debited when postage is prepaid before being placed into the mail stream. Additionally, many postage meters provide proof of the postage payment in the form of printed indicia that is printed directly on the mail piece, typically on the upper right hand corner of an envelope.
In a postage system that utilizes prepaid funds such as the USPS, a postage meter may account for funds by providing an ascending register to track money spent, a descending register to keep track of available funds and a piece count register to track total number of mail pieces franked. It is possible that the indicia printing operation may fail after the local accounting vault has debited the postage funds that were associated with the indicia. For example, the mailing machine may improperly feed the envelope causing the ink jet indicia printer to improperly print the indicia. Other known failure conditions exist and are not discussed in detail.
Mail pieces that have been damaged or those with improperly printed indicia are considered spoiled mail pieces. Additionally, a mail customer may decide not to mail a mail piece for other reasons. If a USPS mailing customer does not use a stamp, the customer may bring the stamp to a local post office for a refund. Similarly, if a mail piece franked by a postage meter is spoiled, the USPS requires a manual process for processing refunds of the unused postage that has been debited from the postage meter.
The current refund process is a costly manual process that is labor intensive. The spoiled mail piece is brought to a local post office and processed. Additionally, the USPS charges a ten percent fee and only returns 90 percent of the spoiled postage value to the user.
If a mail customer uses an Internet postage system such as the CSO system, spoiled postage refund requests may be mailed to the USPS or their agent including the spoiled envelope or a statement from the user establishing that the postage did not print.
A reference directed to Instant Online Postage is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,619,544 issued to Bator, et al. on Sep. 16, 2003 and is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
The United States Postal Service published a draft specification entitled Performance Criteria for Information-Based Indicia and Security Architecture for Open IBI Postage Evidencing Systems (PCIBI-O), dated Feb. 23, 2000.
Postage meters may be characterized as operating in an open meter manner or a closed meter manner. A typical closed system postage meter includes a dedicated printer for printing evidence of postage dispensed and accounted for by the meter. A typical open system meter may utilize a general-purpose printer. Postal funds are often stored in a postal security device (PSD) that may employ a secure accounting vault. The typical postage meter user leases a postage meter and registers that postage meter with the United States Postal Service (USPS).
Virtual postage meters such as the CLICKSTAMP™ Online (CSO) system are available, and exist as accounts at a data center with a user having a postage meter license to use a corresponding virtual postage meter by remote access. A remote virtual postage meter account and remote cryptographic processors are utilized to produce indicia information that is used by the user's local processor to print postage indicia. As described more fully in the incorporated references, the CSO virtual postage meters utilize the Information-Based Indicia Program (IBIP) indicium that is a distributed trust system. The user fills the postage vault with funds and then dispenses the funds as postage by applying printed postage indicia to mail pieces that are then placed in the mail stream. The CSO user has a virtual postage meter account with a unique serial number and that account is associated with a postage meter license obtained under authority of the USPS.
A reference directed toward reissuing digital tokens in an open metering system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,157,911, issued to Cordery, et al. on Dec. 5, 2000 and incorporated herein by reference.
A reference directed toward preventing fraudulent printing of a postage indicia displayed on a personal computer is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,988,897, issued to Pierce et al. on Nov. 23, 1999 and incorporated herein by reference. The Pierce system describes determining whether the output device is a window or a printer and choosing the appropriate indicium to render based upon that determination. Accordingly, a screen print function would print the sample indicium. Accordingly, a downloaded application could hook into the operating system printing sub-system so that the user would not be able to print multiple copies of an indicia. Commonly owned, co-pending patent application Ser. No. 09/451,598, filed Nov. 30, 1999 directed toward a method for preventing the duplicate printing of an IBIP indicium is incorporated herein by reference.
Commonly owned, co-pending patent application Ser. No. 09/952,543, filed Sep. 14, 2001 and entitled Method And System For Optimizing Refill Amount For Automatic Refill Of A Shared Virtual Postal Meter, is incorporated herein by reference. Commonly owned, co-pending patent application Ser. No. 10/012,960, filed Nov. 5, 2001 and entitled Method And System For Secure Printing Of Indicia Via A Web Based Browser, is incorporated herein by reference.
Several types of value transfer systems are used in postage payment systems in general and by the USPS in particular. For example, stamps may be purchased and then utilized to pay for postage. A permit system may be used in which a mailer established an account with the USPS and then uses a manifest system to account for postage. Additionally, a meter system may be used. A postage meter is loaded with an amount of postage value that is then dispensed by printing postage indicia on mail pieces.
In another payment model, a broker may act on behalf of a customer to pay the postage due to the carrier such as the USPS as long as the USPS is convinced that the system is sufficiently secure. The broker is then responsible for paying the postage. In such a system, the user does not require a postage meter license. The broker obtains a postage meter license for the broker data center and obtains location information from the users. The broker then sends the location information such as the zip code to the USPS with the mail piece data. The broker is then responsible for identifying a particular package sender if required by the USPS.
In all such postage payments systems described above, there is no convenient mechanism for processing spoiled or unused postage refund requests.